This invention relates generally to slides, and more particularly to bearing retainer retention devices for slides.
Telescopic slides for file drawers and the like are often desirable for use in cabinets and rack mounted applications. Such slides permit easy access to the interior of the drawer, or to equipment mounted in a rack. The slides support the equipment, while allowing slidable or rollable insertion and extraction of the equipment from the rack. A typical drawer slide has two or three slide members slidably, e.g., rollably, connected by sets of bearings riding in raceways formed on the slide members. Individual bearings within a set of bearings are often held in relative position to one another by bearing retainers.
One type of slide is a telescopic drawer slide. In a telescopic slide the various slide members comprising the slide are nested within one another and extend from one another in a telescopic manner. Two-element telescopic slides normally include an outer slide member and an inner slide member. The outer slide member is generally either connected to the rack or enclosure, or coupled to the rack by way of intermediate elements such as brackets or other hardware, although it is recognized that the inner slide member may instead be so connected or coupled. The inner member is generally connected or coupled by hardware to equipment, such as computer equipment, to be stored in the rack. A three-element telescopic slide will additionally normally include an intermediate slide member slidably coupled to and between the outer and inner slide members.
Each slide member, whether an outer slide member, inner slide member, or intermediate slide member, generally comprises a vertical web with bearing raceways extending horizontally from upper and lower margins of the vertical web. The bearings coupling a pair of slide members are often held by a common bearing retainer. The bearing retainers generally mirror in shape the drawer slide members, although the bearing retainers may include a hat like portion in the vertical web. Accordingly, the common bearing retainer also has a vertical web, and flanges extending from the upper and lower margins of the vertical web for retaining bearings, and possibly a hat like portion in the vertical web.
Often a mechanism is provided so that the inner slide member can be disconnected from the outer slide member, for example so that equipment held by the slide may be entirely removed from the rack for service or replacement, and then reinserted within the outer slide member. The process of reinserting the inner slide member within the outer slide member (or intermediate slide member for a three member slide) is more easily accomplished if the bearing retainer is maintained in a position near the forward end of the outer slide member. In addition, if the bearing retainer is not maintained in such a position then misalignment of the inner slide member with respect to the outer slide member during the reinsertion process may result in inadvertent contact between the inner slide member and the bearing retainer. As the inner slide member tends to be of a significantly greater thickness than the bearing retainer, this contact may well result in damage to the bearing retainer.